


Breakfast for Dinner

by thingswithwings



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, Gen, Team, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Teambuilding, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:44:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1427257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After she gets turned into a superhero, rescues Tony Stark from a giant monster, prevents the Statue of Liberty from falling into the ocean, flies into space under her own power, and fills out a truly remarkable amount of paperwork, it's about two days before Carol's officially being handed over to Abigail Brand and then shuffled into the Avengers Initiative.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakfast for Dinner

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I wanted to write Carol-joins-the-MCU-Avengers! And I borrowed from some EMH Carol stuff and some Captain Marvel/Avengers Assemble Carol stuff to do it. Mostly written before Cap2, no spoilers therefor.

After she gets turned into a superhero, rescues Tony Stark from a giant monster, prevents the Statue of Liberty from falling into the ocean, flies into space under her own power, and fills out a truly remarkable amount of paperwork, it's about two days before Carol's officially being handed over to Abigail Brand and then shuffled into the Avengers Initiative.

"They don't know what to do with a pilot who doesn't need a plane," Brand says darkly, when Carol reports to her for duty. "The Air Force lately is more interested in the opposite. So you're here working for me and SWORD, but officially I have to lend you to Nick Fury when he asks, and probably to the Air Force if they decide they want you back at any point, and Tony Stark is making noise about how you're an Avenger whether you like it or not."

"Yes, ma'am." Carol says, trying not to sigh. She's had superpowers for two weeks and already she feels like the rope in an interagency tug of war. 

There's a pause while Brand evaluates her from behind her shaded glasses. 

"Cheer up, Danvers. You can fly under your own power and shoot beams from your eyes or whatever, most people wouldn't trade that for anything."

Carol straightens up slightly. "Yes, ma'am."

"You're meeting Fury at noon and the Avengers at sixteen hundred. You got a costume or anything yet?"

Carol blinks, looking down at her dress uniform, with all her medals pinned to the front. 

"We'll get you one," Brand says.

*

Her first meeting with the Avengers is awkward; she saved Stark from being eaten by a giant lizard and all that, but he'd been mostly unconscious at the time, and they hadn't really had time for pleasantries. Now it's all pleasantries, him in what's probably a ridiculously expensive designer suit, her still wearing her dress uniform with her cap tucked neatly under her arm, and all the other Avengers lounging around Stark Tower, passing muster on her.

That last part is probably her imagination. She shakes Stark's hand, and Agent Romanov's hand, and Agent Barton's hand, and Pepper Potts' hand, and fucking _Captain Rogers'_ hand all in a row, and then shakes with Dr Banner, who grasps her hand in two of his and doesn't seem to know when he's supposed to let go, and then before she knows it there's a God of Thunder wrapping her up in a hug and it feels like a while before the others convince him to put her down. Back on her feet, she's more nervous than before, and certainly more wrinkled.

"Sorry about that, Thor isn't much for handshakes," Tony says. "We hope to have him trained up soon. We need to get biscuits or something for rewards."

"Tony lacks passion," Thor says, clasping her shoulders firmly and staring down at her. "I am expressing my gratitude for your heroism and my joy that you have joined our team."

"Thanks," Carol says. What in the hell is she supposed to do with these guys again? Fight supervillains or something? There's a long, awkward pause.

"So you're officially with SWORD now?" Agent Barton asks into the silence.

"Yup." 

There's another awkward pause.

"We're so glad to have you with us," Banner says, and there's a weird note in his voice that Carol can't quite place. The guy doesn't have the best history with the military, though, so maybe it's her uniform that's bothering him. She wishes, for a second, that she'd thrown together some kind of superhero costume instead. Cape made out of a bedsheet, maybe.

Stark coughs. "Anyway, uh, you're supposed to be meeting Rhodey too, but he's uncharacteristically late – hey! Rhodey! Get over here and meet Danvers!" 

She turns her head, and before she can even think to hope for him it's James Rhodes striding in the door, and this time she's the one lifting someone off their feet in a bear hug.

"Rhodes! I thought you were still on assignment with the Secret Service!" she practically shouts into his shoulder. Rhodes laughs, and she puts him down.

"You know how it is, Danvers, I go where they tell me, and this week they tell me to be an Avenger."

"You two know each other," Stark says blandly from a few steps away.

"Danvers was a year ahead of me at the Academy," Rhodes says to Stark, then turns back to face her again. "I heard about your new super stuff, but you were bouncing around so much I couldn't get a hold of you."

She punches him in the shoulder. "It's so good to see you."

"Ouch, watch out, some of us around here are mere mortals."

"That's not what I hear. You're the big hero these days."

"Probably why they want me to watch over these clowns. Bring them an air of respectability."

"Ha ha," Tony says, and it's sarcastic but Carol can tell there's real warmth underneath. She smiles. Any friend of James Rhodes is probably a friend of hers.

"You guys wanna get a pizza or something?" she asks.

*

"Definitely going to need a costume," Stark says, around a mouthful of garlic bread. "I'm thinking, long-sleeved bathing suit, thigh-high boots, maybe a scrap of a cape – "

"I'll set you up with our tailor," Potts interrupts him, making the kind of desperate woman-to-woman eye contact with Carol that says _oh god my boyfriend's an idiot, I am so sorry_. "Something tasteful, high-collared. With pants. I promise. You'll be wearing more than Steve."

"Not that Captain Rogers' outfit leaves a lot to the imagination," Rhodes drawls, and Carol laughs.

"I always assumed that was some kind of strategic move. Make the enemy swoon into submission," she says.

"Yeah, I feel like the Chitauri were really sighing with desperate lovesickness behind their masks," Tony puts in.

Carol grins, feeling a lot more at ease. "You don't know, Stark, they could've had Captain America collectors' plates back up on the spaceship. Maybe their true purpose was to kidnap Captain Rogers for sex slavery."

"What was that?" Rogers calls from the other end of the table. Stark does a little spit-take as he laughs, and Rhodes and Carol and Potts all laugh with him.

"Great," Rogers mutters. "Now I have two zoomies to worry about. You two are gonna be in cahoots, aren't you?"

"Oh, I hope so," Carol says, winking at Rhodes.

*

The awkward thing is, three days later Captain Rogers _is_ kidnapped for sex slavery.

"I am so sorry about this. I feel like it's my fault," she says, as they bellycrawl through the surprisingly sturdy duct system in Zola's lair. There are cobwebs in her hair. It's no more than she deserves, though.

"Eh," Romanov says. Carol notices that she has magically managed to avoid getting any cobwebs in her hair or gross sticky grease on her uniform. And she doesn't even have magic. Carol has magic. Which isn't helping at all. "Steve getting kidnapped to fulfill some geneticist's racist sex fantasies is just another Wednesday around here."

"Oh," Carol says. Being an Avenger is different than working for the Air Force.

They crawl on for a little while. Eventually Carol's super-hearing starts to pick up voices; she's pretty sure one of them is Captain Rogers.

"Yes, I hear him," Romanov says, when Carol opens her mouth to say as much. Carol's eyebrows shoot up. There's more to Agent Romanov than was written in her SHIELD file, if her hearing is anything to go by.

" . . . never get away with this dastardly plan! My superfriends will arrive soon and defeat you and the fascism you represent!" 

"Laying it on kind of thick, isn't he?" Carol whispers. She hasn't known Steve Rogers for very long, unless you count the Captain America Choose Your Own Adventure books she devoured as a kid, but she's pretty sure he doesn't talk like that. Two days before, during a SHIELD briefing, he'd offered Carol Twizzlers from his belt pouch and doodled cartoon versions of the Avengers in his notebook during the presentation.

There had been a cartoon of her, even, in the new uniform that Pepper had made for her, flying and punching a HYDRA goon. When Carol had glimpsed it over Cap's shoulder, he had turned his head and grinned at her, like she was one of the team.

"It's not Steve's first time being kidnapped for medical experiments," Romanov whispers back. "You gotta keep 'em talking."

Indeed, Cap is still going, replying to each of Zola's taunts with a strangely motivational yet ultimately nonsensical patriotic word soup. 

"Protest all you like, _Captain Rogers_ , soon I will be using samples of your genetic material to produce an army of superclones, loyal only to me!"

Rogers sighs. "And how exactly are you getting that genetic material, Zola?" he asks. "You don't strike me as a hands-on kinda guy." Whoa. That's kinda racy, and a lot more like the guy Carol's been getting to know over the last few days.

As they shuffle faster, Carol is almost certain she can hear Zola sneer.

"I have developed a machine!" Zola cries. 

"Yikes," Carol mutters.

"Let's get in there before the machine comes out," Romanov agrees.

They swing down from the rafters just as Stark, Rhodes, and Thor burst through the wall on the other side of the lab. They all thoroughly destroy the gross . . . semen-harvesting machine, beat up a bunch of HYDRA (or, vaguely HYDRA-esque, at least) soldiers, and actually manage to get Zola into custody.

"Thanks, team," Captain Rogers says, with an eye on the broken and twisted part of the machine that was meant to interact directly with his biology. "That was a close one."

"Nah, we could've burst in at any time," Carol says, smiling as she grips Rogers' forearm and pulls him to his feet. "We were just enjoying your banter."

"Completely necessary Avengers survival skill," Rogers says seriously. He accepts her help, and leans on her once he's standing, shaking his legs and trying to get the feeling back in them. She takes his weight easily, of course, but not without surprise. No military man she's ever worked with has done anything like it before, at least not without being shot first.

Stark is poking at the now-destroyed machine and frowning. "I don't know why everyone's so hot for your semen, Rogers," he grumbles. "No one ever kidnaps me and forces me to submit to fucking machines."

"Well, I'm sure if you asked Pepper real nice," Rhodes says, flipping up his face mask and grinning. 

Tony sighs longingly. "Too bad we wrecked this one."

Carol blinks and tries not to stare at him. And that's her first mission with the Avengers.

*

On her fourth mission with the Avengers, she's the one who's kidnapped, which at least makes for a change of pace. She doesn't really know much about the rescue op, since she's standing in a giant bell jar the whole time and being creepily soliloquized at by some creeper. She tries to punch her way out, then blast her way out, then kick her way out, then blast her way out again, but whatever's powering the bell jar's containment thingy is stronger than she is.

Carol isn't a big fan of things that keep her in one place, or of things that are stronger than she is. She kicks the glass again, setting off an angry blue ripple of reactive force field.

"Now, now, my dear, be a good little showpiece. I can't have disruption within my collection."

Carol takes a very deep breath, then another. The force field stings. She can't beat it. She's better off conserving her energy so she can throttle this asshole once she's free.

Deprived of a reaction, the Collector guy gets bored and leaves the room, which at least gives her more time to try to keep herself from freaking out.

Not freaking out isn't really a Carol Danvers specialty move, though.

The week before, she'd seen Bruce meditating in the backseat of a helicopter, his eyes closed and his hair whipped around by the wind. When he noticed her looking, he said that focus on the breath was a good way to manage anger and release physical tension. He'd shown her a few breathing techniques before she started to get suspicious.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

"No reason," Bruce said, smiling beatifically. Carol narrowed her eyes at him, but let it go. She was coming to realize that Banner was kind of an asshole, and that it was one of his best qualities.

"So, is this how you manage the Hulk?" she asked. Bruce laughed.

"No, this is a shit way of managing the Hulk. No one manages the Hulk, really. But it is good for if you're just really mad. Or for fear of heights."

"I'll catch you if you fall, Doc," Carol said. Bruce chuckled.

"You better, or else there'll be a Hulk-shaped dent wherever I land." It made Carol blink and reconsider, to realize that Bruce's fear of heights had nothing to do with fear of death. Maybe it was more like fear of being out of control.

In the present, trapped in her little jar, Carol takes deep breath after deep breath, using the techniques Bruce taught her, and fights the angry, pent-up feeling that comes with being out of control. She can imagine how, for Bruce, this feeling might lead to turning into a giant monster. If Carol could turn into a giant monster right now, she probably would.

As she focuses on the air moving through her body, though, a thought occurs to her.

Where is the air coming from? 

A classic bell jar is actually for killing specimens, she remembers, but she's been in here for two days. The food appears magically in the middle of the floor every few hours, and the toilet is a hole in the ground at the far side of the circle, but the air . . . 

Even if he's using magic or whatever to transport the food in and the waste out, Carol's willing to bet that moving that much oxygen and carbon dioxide is a lot more difficult and more taxing. She knows from magic, and it's always easier to blast shit full-force than to do something carefully and delicately. 

She combed over the whole cell when she first got here, but she didn't know what she was looking for, then. It takes an hour or so of searching, but eventually she finds it: an area where there are tiny, almost invisible pinpricks in the white plasticy material of the floor. 

"Got you," she says, under her breath.

"Hi," says a voice from beneath.

Carol looks around in terror, sure that the Collector guy is standing right next to her jar again, but she's still alone in the creepy trophy room. She's the only living specimen, or at least the only one in this area, and Collector guy isn't anywhere to be seen.

She glares down at the near-invisible vent and purses her lips.

"Barton?" she guesses.

"Present," Barton says. "Great, can you help me get this thing open? We'll have you out in two shakes."

Carol feels a flood of hope and relief, but only for a moment, before she remembers that she blasted every square inch of this cell and nothing came apart.

"I don't know if we can," she says doubtfully.

"The material covering the floor is impervious to your energy blasts," Barton says, "but the metal underneath isn't. If you can get through the metal, I can get through the anti-Carol carpeting."

"Huh," Carol says. She lights up the tip of one finger and stares dubiously at the little pinprick holes in the floor; she's never tried to concentrate a beam that tightly before. 

"You might want to skitter off down the tunnel a little," she warns. Barton makes the sound of skittering.

Her first three attempts go wildly astray, bouncing off of the floor and stinging her in the face and arms. "Ow," she says, gritting her teeth and trying again.

"Anytime, Danvers, the distraction the others are running on the Collector isn't going to last forever."

"Tell Jim to take his shirt off," Carol suggests, trying another blast and getting another reflected blast in the face for her efforts. "That's very distracting."

"It's a strategy they haven't tried, that's for sure," Barton says.

"This is like trying to thread a goddamn needle with your brain," Carol says, focusing on the narrowness of the beam, the steadiness of her hand, the perfect alignment of energy and tiny hole.

This time, she gets through.

"Awesome!" Barton calls. "Now you need to just sort of sweep it back and forth, cut through the metal."

"Yeah, sounds easy," Carol agrees. She sticks her tongue out between her teeth for additional concentration power. "I don't usually shoot around corners."

"Maybe I should teach you. It's fun."

"Your idea of fun is warped, Barton." She can feel her energy beam encounter resistance, and blasts until it breaks through the barrier.

There's a clang from below. "Okay, that's the left side. Sorry, your right, the right side. Now swivel left – that's it." He's quiet for a moment as Carol concentrates on shifting the energy beam. "I'm thinking of getting a dog," he says.

"That's a terrible idea."

The metal clanging sound comes again, followed by a huge-sounding crash. "Barton?" Carol calls, as loud as she dares. "Clint?"

"M'good," he calls back, eventually. "Stand back, I have to use this acid on the white stuff."

A minute or two later, the floor starts smoking, and a minute after that, the whole thing caves in.

"Yes!" Carol says, giving herself a fistpump. She starts toward the hole in the floor, but as she does, the door in the main room creaks and the Collector walks back in.

"Hey," he says, then louder, "Hey!" 

"Whoops," Carol says, and dives for the hole in the floor.

"Is that the – " Clint is saying. Carol cuts him off.

"No time," she says, and scoops him up in her arms like a kid and starts flying them forward through the vent at high speed. They just barely fit, her elbows clanging occasionally against the metal sides. "Tell me which way, Hawkeye, I'm not used to the darkness and I can't see a thing."

"Roger. Left in twenty meters."

Carol puts on a burst of speed and skids them around the corner without any bumps.

"The tunnel rises at about twenty degrees over the next hundred meters, then there's a T-junction," he says, trying to tuck his body in so he doesn't hit the walls with his feet. "Take a right there."

When they finally crash out into the open air – her bad, she should've known there'd be a vent cover at the other end – Natasha and Steve are waiting for them.

"Who's rescuing who?" Steve asks wryly, as Carol lets Clint down out of the bridal carry.

"Eh, you know Carol," Clint says, dusting himself off. "She's not happy unless she gets to fly really fast through something really dangerous."

"Sounds about right," Natasha smiles.

Steve puts a finger to his ear to switch on his radio. "Avengers, package has been acquired. Rendezvous at base camp to regroup."

Carol's super-hearing picks up the tinny note of Jim's reply. "Copy, Cap." Sounds like the distraction team also fared pretty well.

"So, your first creepy kidnapping scenario," Natasha says quietly, keeping pace with Carol, both of them walking behind Steve and Clint. "How'd it go?"

"Well, I didn't get a chance to use any of Steve's patriotic one-liners," she says, "but I did have my own human-sized bell jar."

"Ooooh, I don't think we've done human-sized bell jars before!" Clint says over his shoulder. "That's a new height in supervillain creepiness."

"Are we forgetting the time Zola tried to harvest my semen?" Steve asks.

Natasha elbows Clint. "Or the time you were encased in lucite and sold at an alien auction?" 

Clint waves this off. "A bell jar is way classier," he says. "But, Carol, if you want to form a 'used as objets-d'art-by-supervillains' club, I'm happy to be treasurer."

"You'll just spend all the club's money on pizza and beer," Carol sighs.

"Hmm," Clint says, agreeing. "Okay, new plan: pizza and beer club."

Carol laughs. "Now that I can get behind."

They do get pizza and beer, sometime later, when they've got the Collector in custody and everyone's taken a shower. Clint clinks beer bottles with her, and Carol feels good, happy in a way she probably shouldn't after being kidnapped by a supervillain and kept in a bell jar for two days. Maybe it's just post-mission euphoria, or relief, or maybe it's because she always knew, deep down, that she'd get rescued. 

*

Three months and six supervillains-slash-alien-invasions later, she's getting used to it, that Avengers dynamic that has everything to do with family and intimacy, brotherhood and sisterhood but, somehow, is nothing like any military unit she's ever fought with before. 

She finally accepts Tony's offer to come live in the Tower – who is she to turn down a rent-free place in central Manhattan, after all – and if anything that only intensifies the closeness, like being in barracks together. When Carol feels like seeing people, all she has to do is wander down to the communal floor and find someone watching a movie, or baking cookies, or playing pool, or working out. In the gym, she starts a game with Thor that she likes to call How Many Avengers Can You Bench Press, which she eventually wins once Tony and Jim bring the Iron Man and Iron Patriot suits into the competition.

"I admit, you can lift more Avengers at once than I am able to," Thor pants. "But I will practice this art and vanquish you eventually!" 

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Natasha says, rubbing her head. It did look like a nasty fall, when Thor collapsed to the ground and the pile of Avengers he'd been lifting had fallen with him.

"At least you landed on me," Clint groans. 

"I still say it's not a fair contest until you let Hulk compete," Bruce grins. "Or at least try to lift him."

"Just for that, I will offer the Hulk a piggyback ride next time I see him," Carol promises.

Living in the tower, she also gets to be privy to the sexcapades that she didn't even know were going on before, and seriously – seriously – it's a lot of sexcapades. 

"Bruce and _Steve_?" Carol stage-whispers to Tony, when she sees them kissing after a team movie night. "I thought Bruce and Natasha? And is Steve even gay?"

"Steve's twenty-four and a supersoldier, so my guess is that he's got some _very_ wild oats to sow," Tony says, frowning down at the remote control. "JARVIS, change the channel," he says.

"Wow," Carol whistles. "Don't we all wish we'd been singled out for that task." She elbows Tony in the side, because she read the tabloids in the nineties. "You sad you didn't get singled out for that task?"

"Steve seems to think that I'm not the soul of discretion," Tony sniffs. "Also, Pepper and I have decided to experiment with monogamy."

Carol furrows her brow in confusion, sinking back a little further into the couch. It's so soft and comfy. "Uh, Jim told me that he has sex with both of you," she says.

"Yeah," Tony agrees absently, still poking the remote. After a minute he looks up and blinks at her. "Wait, that's not monogamy?"

Carol buries her face in her hands and laughs. 

*

When Tony's birthday rolls around, Jim and Bruce collaborate with Pepper on a home-built replica of the HYDRA semen-extracting machine, which they unveil during his party and which no one seems to think is a little intimate for a gathering of 200 people. It's supposed to be a gag gift, but Carol is pretty sure it's also what the science types call a _working model_. She laughs at the over-the-top supervillain-fabulous gears and gauges and levers (the levers all topped, of course, with giant bulbous red handles) and only thinks it's marginally weird.

She is an Avenger, after all.

*

"Hold him down!" Steve yells into the comms, as the Hulk starts thrashing and twisting in obvious pain. The Kree weapon hit him square in the back and latched on, and whatever it's doing, it doesn't look comfortable. If the Hulk keeps stumbling around like that, though, he's going to destroy half of the city by himself.

Carol and Thor exchange a dubious glance when they hear Steve's order, but they launch themselves into the air simultaneously to obey it, throwing themselves at the Hulk with what's hopefully enough acceleration that they'll be able to bear him to the ground.

They manage it, barely, Carol on the Hulk's right arm and Thor on his left, both of them screaming with the exertion of working against the Hulk's raw power. Carol uses her legs to push down against the Hulk's huge thigh, her arms against his shoulder and arm, her head against his back, pushing with everything she's got, and it's still just barely enough to keep the Hulk from bucking up too much. Thor's having a slightly rougher time on the other side, which doesn't help, struggling to get a grip on the Hulk's still-flailing left fist.

"Keep him still!" Steve says, as if it's just a lack of will on their parts that's causing the problem. 

"Cap I will seriously kill you with my eyebeams if you say that one more time," Carol grunts, digging her free leg down into the concrete to give herself more purchase.

"Tony's gonna figure out how to remove it," Steve says apologetically. "He needs Hulk to be as still as possible."

"A simple task," Thor pants, finally grabbing the Hulk's fist and lying down on it.

"Okay guys, just a couple more seconds. I think I can take it off without hurting him."

"Please, Tony, take your time," Thor says graciously, and Carol would laugh if she had breath to spare. The Hulk squirms and thrashes beneath them and it's like riding a lightning storm, except that Carol has ridden an awful lot of lightning storms and this is way harder.

"Got it," Tony says, a million years and at least twenty bruises later. "He should be coming out of it."

Indeed, the Hulk is calming beneath them, obviously able to control himself again. Carol thinks about that.

"Uh, Thor," she says, in warning, but before she can get any further both of them have been thrown off violently, and as they fly twenty feet through the air and crash together into a brick wall, Carol thinks, this is why you don't try to control the Hulk.

She extricates herself from the wall and offers Thor a hand, which he takes unblinkingly. She pulls him free, and together they walk cautiously back over to the Hulk. 

"Are you all right, friend Hulk?" Thor asks, from a safe distance. The Hulk is standing now, head bowed, panting. The device that Tony removed is on the ground next to him, and he brings his big green foot down viciously upon it, grinds it until it's dust.

"Uh, I was going to say, let's study that piece of alien technology, but, okay," Tony calls. "I'll just go fight Ronan the Accuser I guess."

"Hulk?" Carol asks. She watches as his massive shoulders heave up and down with his gasping breath, something she's only seen a few times before. It takes a lot to get him winded.

"They want to control me," Hulk growls. "Make me work for them."

Carol's eyes narrow, and beside her, Thor grips his hammer tightly.

"No one takes you from us," she says. "You're an Avenger."

"And you are free," Thor adds, darkly.

Now Hulk turns back to them, a huge horrible monster, a living weapon, Carol's friend. "Thank you," he says. Carol and Thor both reach up and hold his arms briefly, a light friendly touch that feels the same as holding the Hulk down so he doesn't hurt anyone by accident.

"Let us go rejoin the fight," Thor says, which makes the Hulk throw back his head and roar. Carol grins at the sight of it, the animal power of it, the bloodthirstiness.

They fly, and the Hulk leaps, and the Kree don't know what hit 'em.

*

"The Air Force wants you back, you know," Brand says one day, casually. "I have ultimate authority, so it's not an order, but if you want to go back I can make it happen."

Carol doesn't even have to think about it. "I'm good here," she says.

*

"So," Jim says over the comm, as Carol swoops to avoid an incoming missile. "How've you been?"

It's her first mission with Jim in a few months; she's been Avenging pretty solid, or else working with Brand, but Jim's still on the Presidential detail and ends up getting called away for half of the major crises to protect D.C. She imagines it must feel good for him to be back to this. She knows she would miss it.

"Peachy," Carol replies, punching out the next missile. Punching missiles sounds ridiculous, but it's turned out to be surprisingly effective. The trick is to _not_ punch them in the warhead, because damn these high-explosive anti-tank motherfuckers _sting_ when they blow up. "On your six."

Jim spins around in mid-air and grabs onto the missile with all four limbs, wrestling it until he can rip out the guidance system with one hand and send the rest of the missile into the bare mountainside below them.

"That's so cute, you look like a little koala bear when you do that." 

"Thanks, I'll make sure my commanding officer hears that. 'In missions where he was acting to neutralize enemy ordnance, James Rhodes' actions were described as cute.'"

"Cute but deadly."

"Thanks, buddy."

They each take out another missile or two. "Do you even still have a commanding officer?"

"It's possible. Mostly these days I report to Fury and Brand. And sort of to Steve."

Carol sighs. "An Army Captain. To think we've sunk so low."

"Yeah, it's disappointing," Jim says, doing a showy little loop-de-loop in the air while they wait for the next barrage to find them. "When I was a kid I never dreamed of following Captain America as part of an elite band of fighters and scientists. Oh wait, I did."

Carol laughs. It always feels good to laugh like this, when she's in the clear thin open air of the upper atmosphere. "Your elite team includes a guy who uses a bow and arrow. And Tony Stark."

Another four missiles; Carol destroys two with her energy blasts and one with a badass punch, leaving only one for Jim to bear hug to death.

"Your team too," he says, once it's torn into scrap and headed for land.

"My team too," Carol agrees. "What other team could I be on, dressed like this?"

"I like the sash," Jim says, obviously grinning behind his robot mask. "At least you're wearing pants, that's more than Bruce can say half the time." He pauses, then says, "I've got a ping, enemy aircraft ahead. Follow my lead."

Carol grins into the sky. "Roger that, Colonel." 

As they come up on the enemy aircraft, the density of the projectiles coming their way increases, a dark wave in the sky ahead. In the lull before the barrage, Jim fires his rocket boots a little and zooms over towards her, fist held out.

Carol bumps it with her own fist.

"Uno Ab Alto," she says, as they throw themselves forward through the rushing wind, adrenaline junkies, misfits, pilots without planes, Avengers.

*

When Janet joins the team, Carol ends up giving her the tour of Avengers Tower.

"But don't take the elevator to the 98th floor, we still haven't finished repairs from when Thor fought Amora in there. There's a landing pad for fliers on the deck, but make sure you check with JARVIS when you want to come in that way. What else? Oh, whenever you get monster goo in your hair or on your skin, you want to go straight to one of the decontamination showers . . . "

"Wow, you Avengers sure live an interesting life," Janet says, smiling. "I've never had the pleasure of having monster goo in my hair before, but you talk like it's a regular occurrence." 

Carol's pretty sure she's had monster goo in her hair more often than she's had pancakes, since coming to live here in the tower. And Bruce makes a lot of pancakes. He says he's just making them for Natasha, on the slow easy mornings when the two of them emerge together, sleep-rumpled and adorable, from Bruce's rooms, but he always makes plenty and never objects when Carol, Steve, and Thor descend on the food like wild animals. He can even be persuaded to make them for dinner, sometimes, when everyone's gathered together for a movie and Tony declares it Breakfast for Dinner night. The last time that'd happened, Jim had ended up with maple syrup all over his face after Clint tried to create some kind of syrup-shooting projectile system to speed up the process of pancake-making, and Carol and Tony had laughed and licked his face, wrestling him to the ground until he submitted, then submitting themselves when Pepper came in and threatened them all with a canister of whipped cream. She wonders if Janet is the kind of person who enjoys breakfast for dinner. She looks like she might be.

"Yeah, I guess you get used to it," Carol says.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Breakfast for Dinner by Thingswithwings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2570663) by [were_duck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/were_duck/pseuds/were_duck)




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